


(touch me) at the seams

by Welcoming_Disaster



Category: Marvel 616, Marvel Comics
Genre: Anal Sex, Avengers Vol. 8 (2018), BDSM, Blow Jobs, Bondage, Dom Steve Rogers, Enthusiastic Consent, Established Relationship, Gags, Impact Play, M/M, Mild Angst, Mild Breathplay, Painplay, Smut, Solid B+ BDSM etiquette, Sub Tony Stark, Subspace, Tony Stark's General Control Issues, with a hint of switching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:53:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28679199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Welcoming_Disaster/pseuds/Welcoming_Disaster
Summary: Tony wants more out of his relationship with Steve and gets it.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 7
Kudos: 25
Collections: You Gave Me A Stocking 2020





	(touch me) at the seams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [veryvincible](https://archiveofourown.org/users/veryvincible/gifts).



> Written for cass's stocking! You wanted BDSM with sub!Tony, and I've added some other things based on conversations we've had on the subject. :)
> 
> NOTE: Please see endnotes if you'd like a warning about the contents of this fic.

Four months into sleeping with Cap, Tony feels that something’s missing.

He’d expected something else, had craved something else, the first time they’d fallen into bed together, had imagined feeling the same kind of way he feels fighting Steve hand-to-hand; every muscle overworked and raw, every emotion pulled out forcefully from his chest, uncoiled, examined, the ugliest of both of them laid bare. He had imagined feeling the way that he felt when they trained together in the gym, seen and understood, just a touch inadequate. He had pictured Steve’s big, calloused hands leaving bruises on his skin, imagined Steve’s face cause somewhere between passion and distaste, and weakness, imagined dragging Steve down with him into uncertain territory.

He’d felt guilty imagining it.

It’s not even that Cap is delicate in bed. He’s hardly the perfect gentleman. He holds Tony up against walls, throws him over his shoulders, blows him in the coat closet at fancy parties.

It’s the way he does it.

Cap, Tony has learned, is a touchy guy. He’s always been touchy. Even in the early days, Tony remembers thinking it funny how often he’d get Steve’s fingerprints on the Iron Man suit — on the small of his back, on his arms, on his gauntlets. He’d often wondered if Steve had thought he’d somehow feel the touch through the suit. He’d never asked, though. He had liked the attention.

Now, Steve likes to put a hand on Tony’s knee when they sit together after missions at the Mountain, his own long legs parked on the coffee table. When Tony’s driving — and Tony drives, mostly, when they go out together— Steve puts his elbow on the center console and curls his fingers lightly around Tony’s upper thigh. He bumps shoulders, rubs elbows, sneaks up behind Tony in the kitchen to press his forehead between his shoulder blades. It’s warm. It’s loving. Tony likes it, craves it when he’s away from Steve.

When they fuck, Steve has his hands on Tony’s hipbones, his thighs, the back of his neck. He tangles fingers in his hair. He peppers kisses along the inside of his leg, traces the curvature of his muscle with artist’s fingers. It feels warm, loving, safe, and yet something about it leaves Tony deeply insecure.

He doesn’t know how to bring it up. _I want you to be a dick to me in bed_ isn’t the kind of conversation he’s ever had to have; with most of the his partners, he’d either already been experimenting, or they’d had bigger problems to worry about.

So it’s probably a blessing in disguise that Steve finds the sex toy closet.

Tony is about as discrete about it as he needs to be. He stores the various implements he’s collected over the years in a closet within a closet, a little branch off door in his walk-in.

It happens like this: Steve’s over in Tony’s apartments in New York City, the place that they, by chance, have ended up the least often. They’d had a good night. Tony, pleasantly fucked out and a little achey, asks Steve to fetch a robe from the closet.

Steve gets up, and Tony flops over on his side to watch the way his back muscles move when he stretches. There’s something poetic, he thinks sleepily, about the he looks nude among the expensive fabrics lining Tony’s closet, pale pink skin against deep reds and golds. He could take a a picture.

“I’m gonna take a picture,” he tells Steve, pulling out his phone.

“Cheese,” Steve says, his back still to Tony. Tony’s phone makes a little fake camera click. For a moment, staring at the planes of his back, the perfect curve of his ass, Tony contemplates the possibility of making this his lock screen picture, and discounts it. He’ll have to get it printed.

“Are they in here?” Steve calls, and, before Tony can sit up enough to see what he means, he cracks open the inner closet door. Tony hears his short, surprised intake of breath. “What’s all this?”

Tony sighs and rolls to his feet, grabbing a robe himself on the way over. Steve is still staring at the collection in the closet.

It’s a good spread, mostly in his signature shades of red and gold. Plugs and vibrators line the top shelf, ranging in sizes from _discrete_ to _ridiculous._ On the left, he’s stored a neatly folded up Berkley Horse. Swings and bondage equipment hang from the hooks. On the bottom shelves, he has the impact stuff, the duller paddles on the left and sharper stingers — the crops, canes, and their lot, his personal favorites,— on the right.

“Oh, just.” Tony comes to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Steve, and, unable to help himself, flicks on a little display light overhead. The smooth rubber buttplugs on the top shelf shine slightly in the yellow light. “This and that.”

Steve reaches over, seemingly unable to help himself, and picks up a red dildo of enormous proportions. It flops in his hands, almost bouncy.

“This and that.” He repeats, running his fingers over the smooth ridges of the thing. “Wild youth, huh?”

Tony hears the beating of his own heart, the hard thrum of blood agains his eardrums. He’s a man of shooting shots.

“Well, if that’s interest I’m hearing in your voice, I’m still young at heart.”

“Oh,” Steve says, and picks up a pair of fuzzy red and black handcuffs, hooking them over a finger, “I’m amenable.”

* * *

Two nights later, Tony slides the little red crop into Steve’s hands and whispers, close to his ear, _I like that one._ He arches his back and lets Steve hit him, hesitant and slow at first, and then, warming up, hard and fast.

It’s nice, he realizes, to do it this way. Steve knows his body, know what pleasure looks like on him, knows how his face contorts in pain. The hazy, warm feeling of both comes over him, red-hot but secure, he can feel without even looking at Steve that they’re on the same page, that Steve understands.

Tony is hunched forward on the bed, his ass up, his face pressed into folded elbows, his body thrumming, every nerve alive. Between blows, Steve runs his hand down his spinal cord, feeling the jut of each bone, and grips the back of his neck. The fine hairs there catch on the rough callouses of Steve’s palm, scratchy against Tony’s recently lotioned skin, and Tony entertains the fantasy of Steve pushing him over, shoving him down, hitting with all his strength, landing the kind of blows Tony has only felt once or twice before, the kind that would break him, Steve making him take it—

“There you are, yeah?” Steve asks, his voice low and loving.

“Yeah,” Tony says, suddenly underwhelmed by warm pain blooming in his rear, “there I am.”

Ten minutes later, Steve’s fucking him, long deep strokes, and Tony takes Steve’s hand and pulls it to rest over his own throat. “You could—“

Blessedly, Steve gets it.Steve pins him, pushes him hard into the bed, leaving a deep imprint of their tangled bodies in the memory foam underneath them. Steve bites at his neck, his earlobe. The familiar hands on his hips squeeze, near bruising, and Tony feels something uncoil deep inside his chest, some tangled knot coming undone, and slides into a welcome calm.

He lets Steve arrange him, push him, lets the tidal waves of pleasure and dull throbs of leftover pain carry him to climax, shakes with the aftershocks from a distant, warm place. He wants to cuddle up, now, wants to hear Steve’s voice low and loving in his ear, like before, wants to sleep.

Steve barely wrangles him onto his feet and into the shower, where he leans heavy against his chest and closes his eyes.

He doesn’t really remember when Steve takes him back to bed. It’s the low note of concern that draws him back to reality, a rubberband’s pull.

“Are you alright?” Steve asks him, one hand on the side of his face, his thumb pressing into Tony’s skin just under his eye. “What’s going on?”

Tony rolls closer, worms his way under Steve’s arm, and breathes in deep. Freshly showered, Steve smells like almost nothing; Tony catches the faint whiff of his own bodywash, a tasteful mix of cardamom and cedarwood. It gives him the simple pleasure of owning something nice. 

"That was nice.” He assures him, pressing his face into Steve’s neck. His usual tension, the low thrum of anxiety, of _what ifs,_ is nearly gone. “Y’can do more next time. I like it.”

Steve kisses him on the ear, and Tony falls asleep that way, pleasantly warm.

Alarms wake both of them before the first rays of the sun even think about poking out from under the horizon. Avenger business.

They don’t talk about what happened, and Tony honestly expects they never will. It’s not their style to talk about this sort of thing. Either Steve will keep doing this with him — Tony has already made clear he’d like to continue — or he won’t.

After the debrief, though, Tony catches Cap on the couch in the common room, peering into his phone with a look a look on his face that means he’s giving his full attention to something. It’s a cute look, almost over the top. His eyebrows knit together. His mouth tugs down slightly at the edges, a little frown of concentration. His whole body seems angled towards the phone.

In a perfect picture, he’d have a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose, but he doesn’t need them. Will never need them, assuming the super soldier serum doesn’t fail him.

Tony puts a hand on the back of his shoulder, feeling the solid curve of muscle, the little divot by his clavicle. “Whatcha reading?”

Instead of answering — though they’re alone now, it certainly feels like the walls at the Mountain have ears — Steve cranes his phone up towards Tony to let him see.

Steve, Tony is amused to learn, has pulled up a page on BDSM basics and etiquette.

“Oh,” he says, pleased, and slides over the arm of the couch to sit down next to him, “by all means, then, don’t let me interrupt.”

After this, Steve gets opinions about things.

He points things out joyfully, like a child learning new words; _that’s subspace,_ he says, or, _we can try sensation play._ Tony, who’s always called the former a _high_ , and the latter _using a goddamn feather, Steve, don’t be pretentious,_ finds this charming.

They try the usual things. Tony, having experimented with many a partner, shows Steve the handcuffs and blindfolds, runs through the motions of establishing safe words.

Steve reads about aftercare on websites featuring pictures of flowers that look like vulvas and corporate style cartoony art of people with hairy armpits joyfully holding buttplugs, which Tony somehow finds both better and worse than the Cosmopolitans where his ex girlfriends had learned _their_ BDSM hot tips.

It's a good start, an easy start. 

* * *

Steve catches him one off guard one Friday night. It’s a rare weekend that neither of them have commitments. Tony is on his bed, replying to the emails he knows can’t wait until Monday, and Steve sits stretched out on the floor in front of the bed. He’d been doing push-ups, but, bored, given up somewhere around two hundred. 

“We should try things the other way tonight,” he says, casually, “you can tie me up.”

Tony’s surprised. It’s not as though this had never occurred to him; he’d switched roles plenty of time in the safety of his head. From the beginning of this, though, it’s been Steve on top, Steve pushing and Tony giving. He hadn’t thought this was on the table.

Steve leans back against the bed and glances up at him, craning his head up, and Tony feels a little thrill of anxiety. As much guilt as he’d felt wanting to be hurt, it’s magnified at the idea of hurting, at the idea of being given this kind of trust and using it to—

“Sure,” he says, wondering what the hell has gotten into him — he’s never before had an issue domming, and Steve is a hard man to hurt, “you want me to pick out the equipment?”

“You’re a real gentleman.” Steve smiles, still looking up at him. He has dimples when he smiles. Tony reaches down and pushes his finger into a dimple, imagines digging in with his nails until he breaks skin. This night could end there, with his nails tearing up Steve’s face.

Would Steve want that?

Tony closes his laptop and slides down, off the bed, to sit beside Steve on the floor. Their shoulders bump. Tony’s height is mostly leg, so when they sit, he feels shorter than he really is, Steve’s bulk exaggerated next to him.

He takes Steve’s hand and pulls it into his lap, tracing his fingers over the layers of solid muscle. He’s build himself a body, once, and he most of what he remembers about the process involves layers and layers on top of each other, bone, muscle, skin, fibrous planes intersecting, overlapping. He imagines what it would be like to pull Steve apart, imagines what he looks like underneath the skin, more muscle than Tony has ever seen on a body, opened up and on display. Some part of him feels like if he can only understand Steve if he sees the inside of him, the raw parts hidden away from the world, but even under the skin, Steve’s perfection incarnate. He could be the musculature diagram hanging on the walls of every biology classroom in the country.

Tony lets go of Steve’s hand and raises a hand to his face, pushing his fingers into the groove of bone just underneath Steve’s eyebrow, watches his eyelashes, uncharacteristically delicate and blonde, flutter shut. If Tony pushed down here, on his eyes, he could really hurt him.

He likes this, likes that Steve lets him press and probe, likes that he can take Steve’s big, heavy head and push it this way and that, likes feeling his skull under his skin.

“Red, yellow, green, alright?” He asks, leaning in to press a kiss to the corner of Steve’s chapped, pale lips.

“Bell if you gag me,” Steve counters cheerfully.

Tony’s stomach constricts, arousal mixing with the same strange fear. He hadn’t even imagined that.

“Go take a shower,” he says, even though he’s never objected to a little sweat, “you stink.”

Steve glances down at the barely-there spots under his arms like he can tell something is off, but leaves without question. Tony can hear the water switch on and knows he’s bought himself five minutes at most.

Five months into sleeping with Cap, and he still hasn’t gotten the guy to stop bodywash as a three-in-one. One day, he promises himself, Captain America is going to condition his hair. Shampoo, at least.

He steps into the walk in closet, flicks on the lightswitch, shuts the door, opens the inner compartment, stares.

And stares. And stares. And stares. His mind, usually so helpful in times like this, is completely blank.

He’ll need something solid, he decides, picking up a thick, hefty leather strap, and then the rest of the kit with it. It’s several layers of the touch stuff, a little overdue to be oiled, too-rigid when he bends it over his own arm.

“I’ll take better care of you tonight, dear,” he promises the leather; he’ll never be out of the habit of talking to inanimate objects.

“Better than what?” Steve asks, peeking through the the door of the closet.

He’s got a towel slung over his shoulders, catching whatever drops of water his short hair had managed to hold on to. Outside of this, he’s naked.

Automatically, Tony checks him out, lets his eyes roam casually over Steve’s body. From a distance, he looks clean shaven, hairless, but Tony knows he’s covered in fine, near white-blond body hair.

He supposes that wouldn’t work well with wax.

God, he really doesn’t know what he’s doing tonight.

He’s faked many things until he has made them, and so he steps forward, smoothly, and pulls on the towel until it slips from Steve’s shoulders.

“I was talking to the equipment,” he says, “nothing but awful care for _you_ tonight, mister. Don’t bother getting dressed.”

Steve laughs. Tony’s eyes are glued to his dimples. “Yeah, I figured. Where do you want me?”

“Uh, sitting.” Tony improvises. He hadn’t been sure what he’d say until he said it. “Those heavier dining chairs. Bring one in.”

He’s going to have to blindfold Steve, he thinks, to give himself a little bit more time to figure out what the hell he’s doing. His practical brain is working, at least, where his sexy brain is failing.

Steve comes back, carrying the wooden chair, and Tony directs him to set it down by the floor to ceiling window on the other side of the room.

He’s dimmed the glass; it’s one way, now, them seeing out but no one seeing in, but Steve, doesn’t have to know that.

Tony puts a hand on Steve’s lower stomach, the bottom of his palm brushing against the place where his pubic hair starts in earnest, and pushes him lightly towards the chair. “Take a seat.”

“Alright, then,” Steve says, the intonation of a little ‘whoop’ clear in his voice. He’s loose, relaxed. He trusts Tony.

His stomach twisting further, Tony kneels down by the leg of the chair and pulls the first leather strap tight around his ankle, tying it to the chair leg, then moves on to the second ankle. Steve is warm and solid under his fingers. He doesn’t scar, but Tony can still map out the places where he should have: his left thigh, where a bullet wound had been only a few weeks earlier, his knees, so often scuffed and bloodied after the falls he takes on missions, his chest, where, last year, an explosion had left its marks.

Tony knows Steve, and sometimes he longs to take a sharpie and and draw the damage back on, to expose the places where Steve is imperfect, but even then, he thinks he wouldn’t catch all of it.

The back of the chair isn’t low, but Steve’s height is all torso, so Tony has no issues pulling his arms behind his back and binding his wrists together. Steve cants back towards him, towards the touch. His back muscles, strained, make a pretty picture, everything visible under the skin.

Tony pulls out the leather blindfold and fits it neatly over his eyes, and then lets his hand tangle in Steve’s hair, trailing down.

He’s had it cut recently. Down by his neck, the hairs are so short they stick straight out and poke against Tony’s fingers. Tony likes Steve with a buzz.

Time seems to slow. Tony feels frozen behind the chair he’s tied Steve to. He’s still fully dressed, his clothes warm and snug, the starched collar loosened by a day’s wear, the black suit a little wrinkled around the elbows. He’s wearing socks without shoes, and they’re a little bit gross, a little bit moist. Steve’s nude, clean body feels like it belongs in a different reality from his own.

He braces himself against the arm of the chair slides into Steve’s lap, hoping that touch will close the distance between them.

“Seems like I’ve got you now, big guy.” It comes out wrong, fake-sultry in a way that’s not even hot in porn. It doesn’t sound like his voice.

He can’t tell if Steve’s tense or if it’s just the the position he’s forced his arms into. He’s perfectly still, not responsive, and Tony doesn’t know if it’s the ropes or something else.

It break the mood further if he got up, now, to shed all his layers like he longs to do, so Tony spreads his fingers out and traces his fingers over Steve’s pecs. His heart, he feels, is jackrabbiting against ribs. His dick lies limp against his leg, matching Tony’s.

It finally comes, complete and vivid. Tony imagines everything he could do to Steve. He could take him by the jaw, push his head back, force his mouth open. Could dig his nails into skin and scratch hard down his sides, leaving grooves. Could pull out the cat o’ nine tails and put his arms into it.

Steve is a hard man to hurt, but Tony is creative, used to letting tools do the work he can’t. Tony knows all his weak points. Tony can make him cry, can see what it looks like when Steve breaks down completely.

He can’t think of a time he’s seen Steve cry, and some dark part of him wants to push it, wants to be allowed it. Suddenly, Tony’s terrified.

It chases him scuttling back to acting, to falsehood. He pulls his keys out of his back pocket and presses his house key to Steve’s neck, cold metal against skin. Steve’s blindfolded; he won’t be able to tell what this is.

He needs a line.

Role-play is good. Role-play is easy, easier than trying to untangle whatever complicated mess of emotions this is pulling out of him.

“One way or another, you’re going to talk, pretty boy.” He’s dropped his voice, getting into character. He really doesn’t sound like himself anymore.

Steve’s breath catches. The chair creaks, and suddenly, they’re tipping over and falling sideways. Tony catches himself on his elbows. Steve, still bound, doesn’t. Tony grimaces as his temple smacks against the floor.

“Red.” Steve says firmly, snapping the leather on his wrists in one clean motion. “Red.”

Tony rolls off him.

He realizes the chair had fallen because Steve had twisted his left ankle and broken the chair leg. Despite having been on top of him, Tony hadn’t felt him move.

Numbly, he reaches over and helps Steve undo the strap on his ankle. Steve pulls off his blindfold in the exact same fluid, wide gesture he uses to pull off his cowl.

He stands, picks up the chair, sets it against the wall, and disappears alone into the bathroom.

Tony watches him go, feeling a strange mix of failure and relief. Then, as he’d wanted to all along, he strips off his blazer and socks, takes off his belt and tosses it on the floor.

Steve’s left the bathroom door slightly ajar. Tony follows him, his bare, damp feet sticking unpleasantly to the tile, and finds him sitting on the edge of Tony’s marble bathtub.

Steve looks up at him, and they make eye contact. Tony can’t read his expression, because Steve is barring him up, constructing barriers. 

Closed off, he thinks. The correct word is closed off.

“Sorry about that,” Steve says. His voice is a normal volume, level, the inflection just right for casual. Part of Tony, the part can’t stand not knowing things, feels satisfied at seeing right through him.

 _He was scared,_ he thinks, _he doesn’t want me to know he was scared._

“No, that’s alright,” he says, and hops up to sit on the edge of the tub next to Steve, “what happened?”

Steve glances down. Tony can see him picking his words, figuring out how to say the truth without being truthful.

“I couldn’t see, and with the way you were talking,” he says, “just for a minute, I—“

“You didn’t feel like you were with me.” Tony says. He hadn’t felt like himself either.

“I didn’t feel like I was with you.” Steve repeats.

Tony reaches over and laces their hands together. He doesn’t say _it scared you,_ doesn’t mention weakness, and he’s rewarded for it when Steve speaks up again.

“I wanted it with you,” he says, “I’d have let you have me.”

It’s a vulnerability that Tony has barely ever seen from him, and he knows not to make a big deal out of it, not to stop and comment.

“I got overwhelmed,” Tony says, “I didn’t know what to do with it.”

Steve reaches up, his fingers tracing along Tony’s hairline. His eyes are soft at the edges when he looks at Tony, fond.

“You overthink,” he says, “you’ve just got to do things.”

So Tony kisses him.

It’s soft and slow. Tony feels the texture of Steve’s skins, the parts where his chapped lips turn coarse. Steve nips at the hollow of his throat, undoes the buttons on his shirt with big, deft fingers, and Tony can feel himself finally hardening.

Steve palms him through his dress pants and smiles, self-satisfied.

He’s still sitting on the edge of the tub when Steve slides, slowly, to his knees and takes Tony’s dick in his mouth, swallowing him down all at once. Tony grips the sides of the side of the tub for balance. You’ve just got to do things, he thinks, and catches Steve’s head with his thighs.

Steve can hold his breath for a long time. Ten minutes, Tony recalls hearing somewhere, either from Steve himself or one of the underwater training drills he’s done.

Steve can also push him off. Steve has no issue pushing him off.

So he doesn’t let up with his thighs. He reaches down with one hand and grips Steve’s head from behind, keeping him in place, jerks forward the best he can without losing balance, thrusting against Steve’s throat.

Steve makes a choked up noise that Tony feels, and, impossibly, comes down further, his nose millimeters away from pressing against Tony’s balls. His hand finds purchase on Tony’s ankle and squeezes.

Tony keeps thrusting, not bothering to count the time in his head. He tries to pull back when he’s about to come, but Steve catches him by the thigh and holds him in place. He gags, slightly, as he swallows. It’s messy. Dribbles of white roll down Steve’s chisel-cut jaw, his blue eyes dark with arousal and oxygen deprivation. The imprint of Tony’s sweaty hand is still visible in his short hair, bedhead messy. He’s breathing heavy, warm breaths against Tony’s thigh.

Tony reaches down and wipes the corner of his mouth with his thumb, and Steve leans into the touch and lets him pet his hair for an indulgently long time.

Then Steve picks him up and fucks him against the bathroom wall, because Steve doesn’t try to fix things that aren’t broken. Pressed up against him, Tony feels secure, understood, and just out of control enough to relax.

* * *

After that night, both of them get busy at once, and for weeks Tony does nothing more than text Steve the occasional overworked nude picture with the bags under his eyes carefully filtered out. Steve, for his part, pursues terrorists on the other side of the country, replying to said texts at the few hours of the night when Tony happens to be asleep.

When Steve returns to New York, his nose recently broken and knuckles bloody in a way that tells Tony he had beaten them to the bone, he knocks on the door of Tony’s brownstone.

Both of then crave touch more than sex. They curl up in Tony’s bed, and Tony doesn’t bitch about the faint smell of blood and sweat, doesn’t mention the dirt that still sticking to Steve’s hair. _It’ll have to be morning sex,_ he thinks, warm and sleepy.

Steve is gonein the morning, having left behind nothing but an apologetic note about his work remaining unfinished, some kind of emergency call back, and Tony sits on the edge of his bed and misses him, like a dumbass.

Six months into sleeping with Cap, it’s clearly gone beyond sleeping with Cap.

Frustrated with himself, though he couldn’t have _not_ known this was coming, he makes his way to the kitchen, where he blends chunks of mango with nutritional powder and turns on the TV.

His own face greets him.

Barely tasting the mango, he sits through the report; Stark technology found in the hands of terrorists. The location — a shopping mall in Washington, DC—, he realizes, makes it likely that this is the same group that Steve’s been fighting. Remembering the broken nose, he shudders.

It’s communication technology, for the most part, not weapons, but the media, already looking to find possible lines of communication, isn’t going to notice or care. It’s going to be down to Tony to figure out how it had gotten there, who had betrayed him.

This doesn’t go over well at the board meeting.

It also doesn’t go over well at work, which continues to be as busy as ever with the extra bonus of lowered morale. He texts Steve, words this time, _Hope all is well,_ but gets no response.

It’s possible, he realizes, that Steve is out in the field right now, fighting guys who use his technology to talk. He takes a moment to throw himself a pity party, imagining Steve surrounded by enemy fighters, each of whom is equipped with a front-of-the-line, innovative distance communication systems, by Stark Industries™, and is using them to discuss the best strategies to kick Captain America’s ass. If only their comms would fail, he might have a chance, but, alas, Tony’s technology is just that good.

Dismissing the thoughts as as unhelpful, he checks his phone again for a message and instead scrolls through the familiar headlines of Stark stock plummeting. Old, half-resigned dread bubbles up in his stomach, and he sets the phone back down, goes manually through old records to mind the missing shipment.

This part doesn’t feel like superhero work.

He longs to be out on the field with Steve. For a minute, he even considers donning the suit, tracking down the terror cell and taking them down himself. But someone was already on them, long before he’d set his mind to join, and the work he’s doing now — the information gathering, the search for whoever had supplied technology to the bad guys, for whatever else they might have, is work that might just as valuable in the long run.

So he sends Steve another text, _Be safe,_ and settles in with his laptop.

He’s paranoid, as he always is, that Stark weapons have somehow gotten out, that whoever it was that had been close enough to reroute a shipment of communication technology could almost have been close enough to get their dirty mitts on old blueprints, on things he’d ordered for the Iron Man, for the team.

He tracks down the lost shipment easily and wades through forged signatures, through staff records, through security footage. He doesn’t know everyone who works for him — it’d be impossible for him to, really — but he makes an effort, and he’s disconcerted to realize that it’d been a guy he’d known, a guy he’d liked.

The young engineer had been smart in a way that Tony had immediately recognized and related to, the showy kind of bright with an insecurity hidden below it. They’d talked at a staff lunch. Promising young man, Tony had written down.

He supposes he’d have to be smart to pull this off.

Betrayal curdles into his stomach like milk, turning sour and resigned. It’s on him, when it comes down to it; he should have seen it coming, should have been more thorough with the background checks, should have been a better judge of character.

Now that he knows what he’s looking for, he finds a request for backlogged files from the server a couple days before the guy had resigned, and curses again. No way to know what he’d taken, but Tony is sure it can’t just be just the comms.

He forwards the information to the authorities, checks his phone (no news from Steve), and returns to doomscrolling, contemplating his next move.

He hasn’t been in touch with the team. He doesn’t know where they’re at, where his arrival would hurt or help, doesn’t know dire the situation is. Things could be delicate.

Then again, he wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for a few unannounced, last minute rescues from team members. It’s not exactly legal, but he can tap into their comms, listen in for a little while before coming down.

It’ll look better for the company’s PR to see Iron Man on the ground defending their property, would look like he, Tony, is doing something. He wouldn’t be surprised if #WhereIsIronMan is trending again on Twitter.

He doesn’t know who’s on the ground; no one had bothered clueing him in. CNN informs him that confirmed sources place Captain America and Spider-Woman on the response team, and he wonders if it’s the ex-SHIELD crew, mostly, that Steve is rolling with.

Who would that be? Jessica, Natasha, possibly Bobbi Morse and Clint, hell, maybe Carol or Rhodey, of all people. It’s not the kind of party he tends to be invited to.

His mind mostly made to don the suit and join them in DC when he reloads the page to see Steve’s face splayed out of the page.

“SPECIAL FORCES SOURCE: Captain America Lost In Combat?”

His hands shake as he clicks on it, the fear bone deep, and reads, skimming down to find the meat of the story: _“An unnamed source confirmed that contact with Captain America and team has been lost at 10:37 AM EST. The specifics and cause remain unknown, and” —_

Tony skims down the page and finds nothing more of interest, the single quote stretched out into an article’s worth of speculation, and pushes his fear down. God, fuck clickbait.

This seals the deal, he realizes. He doesn’t make the conscious decision, just finds the suit assembling itself around him, finds himself calculating the time it would take for him to get to DC.

He should have gone sooner. He should have been there before they’d lost communication an hour ago.

Maybe if Steve had been using his technology, he wouldn’t have lost contact. Maybe if Tony had made a point from the beginning to outfit him, to make sure he was on the same level as the men he’s fighting, this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe if Tony hadn’t slept in, if he’s asked Steve what was happening the morning he’d left, why the tides had turned—

He flies to DC in thirty-five minutes.

By then, it’s all over.

His visors immediately zoom in on the set of Steve’s wide shoulders underneath him, bright blue and recognizable. He stands just by the wreckage where a bomb had gone off in a Pinkberry, and he’s talking to black clad SWAT officers, gesturing as he speaks. He looks fine.

Tony lands down next to them more heavily than he’d intended. Relief has done almost nothing to ease the horrible knot in this stomach.

Steve looks a little scuffed up, sweaty, but he’s not holding himself like he’s hurt. The cowl is torn around the eye, a straight tear along the seam, the kind of thing he’ll insist on getting fixed instead of replaced. The gloves are dirty.

“You missed the action, Shellhead,” he says, tossing Tony a grin, and he could cry.

He pulls his helmet off, holding it in two hands. “Come see after you’re done here.”

“Might be a bit,” Steve says, “with the debrief and all.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, his mouth dry, “just come see me. Phone working? I’ll text you.”

He stands around for half an hour, idly watching Steve’s figure as he talks to one group of men after another, meets his team, disappears into the plane. 

After thirty minutes, he retreats a few blocks away, buys himself a coffee, and texts Steve his location. It’s another four hours, each accompanied with another coffee, before Steve actually walks through the doors of the establishment.

He looks good, if a little tired. Tony has always liked Steve a little scruffy, and this is scruffy, post-mission Steve if he’s ever seen him. If they weren’t in a public place, Tony would grab him by the collar and kiss him, back him against the wall, against the counter, he’d—

“I hope you know you’re my ride home,” Steve says, sitting down across from him.

“I hope you don’t mind flying,” Tony counters. He reaches over and takes Steve by the wrist, and doesn’t let go. This, at least, is allowed to them here.

He traces Steve’s hand with his fingers, feeling the little upward jut of his ulna just over his wrist, worms his fingers under the glove to feel the rush of blood under his skin, to feel his heart beat.

“I was worried,” he says.

“Yeah,” Steve says, “I noticed.”

“I saw the press release about losing communication.” Tony replies, feeling the need to justify himself. “I thought it could mean…”

“Signal jammers,” Steve says, taking a sip of Tony’s coffee, “stolen from you, apparently.”

Needing to fidget, Tony rolls Steve’s glove up and then back down,.“Can’t they find someone else to steal from, for once?”

“If they did, we’d know way less about the tech,” Steve points out.

For a few minutes, they sit in silence. Steve finishes Tony’s coffee, holding it against his chest like he’s trying to absorb the warmth. Tony can’t shake the morning’s anxiety, the jittery feeling under his skin.

“You’re coming back with me,” he says, “to my place. Leave the paperwork you’re dying to get done for tomorrow.”

“It’s fresh in my head now,” Steve says, and Tony tightens his grip on his wrist.

They make eye contact. Tony can physically feel it, Steve softening in his hold.

“I need you,” he says, his voice low.

“Yeah,” Steve says, “yeah, alright.”

* * *

He flies slower with Steve in his arms, but it’s still not long before he’s back on his bed, answering hurried emails from the PR team, and Steve is in his shower. The anxiety hasn’t faded. It’s a litany of the little things playing on repeat in his head: _his_ comms, _his_ signal jammers, _his_ mistakes, he didn’t come in time, didn’t ask quickly enough, had really thought that going through files could have been as important as being there on scene, as the work Steve was doing, and what if, what if it’d been worse, what it’d been weapons—

It comes down to this: Tony had placed trust in the wrong person. Tony had allowed great, smart, innovative technology to fall into the wrong hands. Steve had cleaned up his mess. Steve had risked his life fighting men who were using his technology while Tony fooled himself into thinking that trying to trace the cause the issue was relevant.

He wants Steve here, with him, but he also wants Steve angry at him, wants to feel the strange, empty comfort of feeling hated.

He hears the shower turn off and strips, methodically, the way he does getting ready for bed. Shirt off, into the dry cleaning basket. Jacket and pants back in the closet. Socks into the laundry. It leaves in nothing but his underwear. It’s a thong, cheerfully red and on-brand.

Steve leaves the shower nude. This time, he’s left the towel in the bathroom.

Tony lets him draw him up into his arms, lets him kiss him, soft and slow, before he draws away. Steve deserves to have this, deserves this moment of sweetness.

He cups a hand around Steve’s neck and pulls him over to sit on the bed with him, puts his bare feet into Steve’s lap.

“Can you be rough with me?” He asks. “I need something intense right now.”

“Oh.” Steve says. He puts his hand on Tony’s solar plexus, fingers splayed, like he knows the root of the issue lies in Tony’s strange, broken insides. “Yeah. I’ll be rough with you.”

“I just want— the most, please, just make me feel it.” He’s immediately a little guilty saying it, asking for it, making this about himself.

But it had only been another day to Steve, another job. Rationally, he knows Steve is probably unbothered, willing to blow off steam.

Steve reaches over and runs a thumb over Tony’s chin, tilting it up slightly so they make eye contact, “That gonna go alright?”

“You know my limits. I know the safeword. If this wasn’t meant for emotional catharsis, Cap, I don’t know what the point is.”

Steve laughs and cups his jaw, instead, kisses him again, quick and playful. “You give me a second here, then.”

Tony sits and waits, feeling strangely blank now that he has asked. He can hear Steve rummaging around the closet, and he takes a second to imagine everything that he could pick up. His brain has always done well with possibility, with potential energy, and he sees the shapes of many items, of many acts, unfolding in front of him.

He sees himself on his knees, sees Steve grabbing his hair, pulling, slamming, sees Steve picking him up and fucking him, sloppy and unprepared and painful, almost splitting him in two. He sees Steve hitting him with his full strength, leaving Tony feeling nothing but pain, and he likes the thought, wants it.

He doesn’t hear Steve comes up. Steve’s big, calloused hands close over his wrists, and as Steve shoves him back against the mattress, he gives a choked gasp and pushes back, kicks out automatically.

It doesn’t stop Steve. The hard lines of his body might as well be steel, as immovable as the frame of the building. It goes straight to Tony’s cock, a throb so sudden it’s a little uncomfortable.

“Don’t make this worse on yourself,” Steve says, low and dangerous. Tony lets up immediately, going limp, but Steve’s grip only tightens, painful now.

Steve takes both of his wrists in one huge, white-knuckled hand. Normally, Tony doesn’t feel like Steve is much bigger than him, but right now, Steve feels all-encompassing, like if Tony breathes too deeply they’ll run of space on the bed, in the room.

So he breathes shallow, quick breaths as Steve binds his wrists together with leather cuffs and fastens them to the bed frame. Steve’s touches are businesslike, no love or sex behind them, and yet Tony is already half-hard, painfully obvious through the thin red thong.

Steve reaches down and palms him, rough. It’s too much, too hard; Tony gasps and flinches away from the touch. Steve glances up, annoyance at the interruption written into his features, and Tony feels a thrill of fear shoot up his spine.

“Steve,” he says, not sure if he means _too much_ or _more._

Steve reaches for something behind them, and Tony sees him pick up something bright red, shiny plastic.

He doesn’t ask, just puts a hand on the side of Tony’s jaw and forces it open to shove the ball gag inside. It’s a tight fit, and it pinches with the kind of discomfort that promises pain in the morning, overwhelming and huge in his mouth.

Steve opens Tony’s hand and folds a little metal bell into his fingers, closes Tony’s fist for him. It breaks the immersion for a moment, a reminder of the fantasy. _This is the safe word,_ the little bell says, _ring me and this will stop._

Tony closes his fingers over the clapper of the bell to make sure it doesn’t ring. He wants this, wants it so badly he feels hollow without it.

Steve sits back on his haunches, satisfied. Tony has parted his legs to let him work, and Steve grabs him by the knees and forces them back together with a short, derisive laugh. Dirty talk has never been his forté, but the laugh seems to say it all anyways; did Tony think he was going to get what he wants, get Steve inside him, get to feel good right now?

Suddenly, Tony’s embarrassed.

Steve pulls another leather strap around Tony’s legs, under over the knees, locking them together, and then cuffs his ankles for good measure.

Tony tests the bond and finds them immovable, his body one long, clean line for Steve to manipulate however he wants. The thought it unbearably hot. Steve’s hand closes on his cock, again, and he can’t help strangled noises that come out of his throat as Steve strokes him, quick and rough, to full hardness.

“Best warm you up,” Steve mutters, not particularly directed at Tony, and grabs him by the ankle, folding his knees back against his chest. He keeps his hand on Tony’s calf, holding his legs up to expose the underside of his thighs, and strikes without warning, open-palmed.

Rationally, Tony knows Steve can’t be using everything he’s got, knows Steve’s blows can break steel. This doesn’t stop him from _feeling_ it.

For a moment, the pain is all he can think, all he can feel. He thrashes against the bonds, shouts through the gag. Steve’s grip on his ankle tightens as he kicks up, against his hand.

The pain fades, slowly, his thigh throbbing with with every breath he takes. His whole body is on fire, and the world is cold and slow around it. Now, he feels everything at once: the grooves of Steve’s fingers on his skin, the callouses on his hands; bits of drool trickling down his chin where the gag has forced his mouth open, cold and wet; his erection, stiff and uncomfortable against his stomach, throbbing; Steve’s eyes on his face, on his hands, alert and calculating.

Sensation overwhelms him, and it takes him far too long to realize that Steve is checking in, looking at the bell, at Tony’s face. He’s checking in.

Tony flexes his fingers around the clapper, draws breath through his mouth, cold air squeezing in around the gag, and gives a little nod. It’s all Steve needs.

He doesn’t hit as hard again. He doesn’t need to. Every nerve in Tony’s body feels overexposed, pulled to the surface just under his skin. Steve hits with his flat palm, once, twice, three times, and the sharp pain dulls and mellows.

He’ll have a perfect handprint on his skin the next morning, he thinks, a sharp purple bruise he’ll feel sitting down. He shivers at the thought.

In the familiar warm haze of pain, he loses track of how many time Steve hits him. Four blows in, he gives up trying to keep track of anything else and just breathes through it, a breath between each blow.

When it ends, Tony feels like it’s only just started, or perhaps like it’s the only thing he’s ever experienced. Steve lets go of his bald and his legs shake and fall forward without the support. He rests his bound ankles on Steve’s shoulder and Steve lets him, turns his head to press a kiss to his lower calf.

Both of them are breathing heavily. Tony tries to match his breaths to Steve’s but keeps falling out of synch, too fast, so he closes his eyes and pretends they’re breathing in tandem anyways. Steve undoes the cuffs on his ankles and the strap around his knees, rubbing at the skin there.

Tony drifts. Distantly, he hears Steve open the bedside drawer, then the wet _squelch_ of lube being squeezed out of the bottle. When Steve’s fingers push into him, he’s loose, relaxed. He keeps his legs spread, chases the pleasure mindlessly, pursuing Steve’s touch as he pulls back out.

Above him, Steve chuckles. It’s not mean, this time.

“Patience,” he says, “don’t you want me to fuck you?”

Tony does. Tony very much does want that.

Steve pushes into him too slow, and then moves sudden and fast. Overwhelmed, Tony closes his eyes and lets the sensations wash over him in waves. Steve knows his body, pushes in hard, deep, hitting against the sweet spot almost each stroke. His thighs ache, jostled each time Steve’s skin brushes against them. Steve’s hand, rough, is on his cock. Steve’s hand, gentle and familiar, cups his hipbone.

“You can come,” Steve says, and Tony, who wasn’t waiting for permission, does.

He’s not sure how long it is before Steve is gently pulling the ball gag out, undoing the wrist cuffs, taking the bell out of Tony’s clenched fingers. Tony wraps his arms around Steve’s neck and lets him carry him into the shower.

The water is a little too warm, stinging pleasantly against the swollen skin on his thighs. Tony sees Steve picking up the body wash and hands him the shampoo bottle instead, gesturing to his own greasy hair. Steve rubs his scalp, scratching lightly with his nails, and then massages his jaw, sore after the gag.

“Are you alright?” He asks. “Was that alright?”

"Yeah." Tony presses his forehead against Steve’s shoulder, leaning most of his weight on his immovable frame. “I think I’m in love with you.”

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS: There is a scene near end of this fic which edges slightly into consensual nonconsent, with one character being forceful and another briefly resisting. Safewords/signals are clearly established and consent is given. Scenes are under-negotiated several times in the story, though in the context of the relationship it's probably fair to assume they've talked about things at least once. Once, a character safewords out of a scene. 
> 
> If you liked this fic, you can find me on [tumblr](welcomingdisaster.tumblr.com/) where I do occasionally take prompts! Comments and kudos are appreciated.


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